Tag Archives: SDR

ELAD introduces new products

Elad FDM-S3

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike Hansgen (K8RAT), who notes that Italian manufacturer, ELAD, has introduced a new speaker, an amplifier and the FDM-S3 SDR is now available to purchase.

Elad-FDM-S3 Screenshot

The ELAD FDM-S3 was first announced last year, but has only recently started shipping. We know its processing bandwidth is impressive–wide enough to include the entire FM broadcast band! The price is 949.90 EUR.

ELAD has also introduced a matching amplified speaker–the SP1:

ELAD SP-1 Speaker Front

ELAD SP-1 Speaker Back

If I owned an FDM-DUO transceiver, I would grab this matching speaker! Knowing ELAD, I imagine the audio is impressive. The price of the SP-1 is 140.30 EUR.

And finally, ELAD has also posted a photo of what appears to be a new amplifier:

Elad Duo art amplifier

I have no details about the SP1 speaker or DUO-ART amplifier–and few details about the FDM-S3–but I will meet with ELAD at the 2018 Hamvention in a few days and gather more details.

Follow the tag ELAD for updates.

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Coming soon: A Spectrum Analyzer function for SDRplay RSP series SDRs

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[UPDATE: Click here for information about downloading Steve’s Spectrum Analyser tool.]

(Source: SDRplay)

Steve Andrews contacted the SDRplay forum recently to share ideas for a new Spectrum Analyser tool for use with SDRplay RSPs. A lively discussion started, with a lot of enthusiasm and encouragement from the user community, for something optimised for these devices. Steve is progressing well with the software development and hopes to have an Alpha release of the basic tool available during May. You can follow the discussion, review progress and add your comments by joining the SDRplay forum and going to: https://www.sdrplay.com/community/viewforum.php?f=12 where we have created a section especially for the Spectrum Analyser topic.

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Propaganda Shift: The Panmunjom Summit and monitoring the Voice of Korea

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Front page of the North Korean newspaper “Rodong” on April 28, 2018. (Source: Mark Fahey)

With North Korea in the global spotlight, I’ve been making every effort to listen to the Voice of Korea on shortwave. Unfortunately, from here on the east coast of North America, conditions have simply not been in my favor.

Fortunately, a couple of SWLing Post and SRAA contributors have had my back.

Yesterday, Richard Langley, uploaded a great VOK recording made with the U Twente WebSDR on April 28 at 13:30 UTC on 13760 kHz. Thank you Richard!

This morning, North Korean propaganda specialist Mark Fahey uploaded the following VOK recording to the archive and included notes and insight:

[The recording is] off 9,730 kHz so a mint shortwave file.

Recorded at the “Behind The Curtain” remote satellite and HF receiving site near Taipei, Taiwan (the site is remotely operated from Freemans Reach in Australia and was specifically established to monitor North Korean radio & television 24×7).

Remote Module #1 prior to sealing.

[Note: Click here to read about Mark’s self-contained deployable remote SDR stations.]

Remote Module #2 fully weather sealed and ready to deploy.

[…]I must say getting a good recording off shortwave is quite a challenge, just going to their satellite circuits far easier!

[T]he reason for the almost hi-fi quality is that I used the real-time audio enhancement and noise reduction techniques I presented at the Winter SWL Fest. The signal in reality was much noisier:

Audio Player

00:00

Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

Click here to download an MP3 copy of the off-air recording.

[I] also have long domestic recordings (which is what I have been focusing on rather than VOK).

[…]Of course domestic in Korean – but that has been my main interest/monitoring – what does the regime say to the domestic audience–?

They seem quite serious (I mean genuine) even acknowledging South Korea as a separate place and Moon being the president of this place. The domestic propaganda now not hiding the fact that South Korea is a separate sovereign nation, which is very un-North Korean propaganda!

The news is still kind of breaking in North Korea and the radio reflects that – the reports sound like Friday was yesterday. It takes a long time for North Korean media to report anything, so news from 3 days ago is presented as if it only happened 3 hours ago.

Also since it’s all topical I will include a YouTube link to a Voice Of Korea Documentary (propaganda to our ears of course–!) that has recently been posted to the Arabia Chapter of The Korean Friendship Association:

https://youtu.be/N6xVtKXXn8Y

Click here to watch on YouTube.

Thank you, Mark! Certainly history in the making.

Mark Fahey is my go-to guy for what’s really happening in North Korea, especially with regards to the message the government shares with its people.

Though I haven’t asked him in advance, I’m sure Mark can follow the comments thread of this post and answer your North Korea questions.

Click here to leave a comment/question or follow the comments thread.

If you have a recording of VOK (or any other broadcaster) that you would like to share, consider contributing to the SRAA.

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Turning the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ into a stand-alone SDR

St. Bandon (3B7A): An all-SDR DXpedition

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3B7A Antenna Layout (Source: SunSDR)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike Hansgen (K8RAT), for passing along this press release from SunSDR:

The 3B7A Saint Brandon team is now active from Saint Brandon and we are exited! This is the first major DXpedition that will be using only SDR transcievers in its setup.[…]

SunSDR2 Pro

Using past experience from their successful FT4TA expedition to Tromelin island and FT4JA Juan de Nova island Expedition, the experienced team lead by F5UFX Seb build their St Brandon setup around the SunSDR2 PRO transceiver, the SPE 1.3K-FA amplifier and ModMic attachable boom microphone.

3B7A will have 5 x HF stations on air simultaneously. Each station will have a SunSDR2 PRO with E-Coder hardware controller, an amplifier, and a ModMic. Logging is done using WinTest in network configuration and all stations will be able to operate CW, SSB or RTTY.

All 5 stations will have will have identical configuration from the keyboard to the amplifier. This will keep the operator focused on the pile-up and improve redundancy in case of any equipment failure.[…]

Click here to read the full article at SunSDR.

Note that I believe the January 2018 Bouvet Island (3YØZ) DXpedition would have also been one of the first major ham radio DXpeditions to use SDRs (FlexRadio SDRs). Sadly, due to weather and engine problems, 3Y0Z were not able to activate.

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SDR Console Version 3: A Holy Grail SDR application for the radio archivist

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Encouraged by SWLing Post contributors Guy Atkins and Ivan Cholakov, I recently installed the latest version of SDR Console on my PC.

I had not tried SDR Console in many, many years, but after Guy announced that SDR Console had moved from preview to Beta, I decided it was time to try it once again.

All I can say is: WOW!

As someone who evaluates a number of software defined receivers and who regularly makes off-air audio and spectrum recordings, I’m simply amazed by SDR Console’s versatility.

The recording functionality, as Guy previously stated, is phenomenal–perhaps the best of any SDR application I’ve used to date save, perhaps, that of the Titan SDR Pro (which is proprietary).

Though I still haven’t logged a lot of hours on SDR Console, I can already mention several powerful features that I love:

Virtual receivers

So few SDR applications allow you to run multiple virtual receivers and–especially–make independent recordings from them simultaneously.

When I started writing this post last night, I was listening to and recording the Voice of Greece on virtual receiver #1, Radio Guinea on #2, and WRMI on #3 using the brilliant little AirSpy HF+.

Audio recording options

When you start a recording of an active virtual receiver, a dialog box pops up allowing you to make a custom file title–it pre-populates the date, start time, frequency and mode. This is a simple but time-saving feature as most SDR applications save files according to global application settings–not for each individual recording. With the SDR Console dialog box, I can insert the name of the broadcaster in the file title which makes organizing recordings later a breeze.

Additionally, you can choose between MP3, WAV or WMA file types for each recording. I know of no other SDR app that gives you this flexibility.

Scheduled recordings

I’ve yet to use the scheduler feature, but based on Guy Atkins’ feedback, I know this will be an invaluable resource for collecting off-air recordings while I’m away from home.

So many features to discover…

As both Guy and Ivan have shown us in past posts, SDR Console allows for multiple application “instances”–meaning, you can run two independent SDRs simultaneously. This is a fantastic feature for those of us who make multiple spectrum recordings. Of course, it’s an ideal platform to compare SDR hardware as settings can be easily matched between both units (something very difficult to do when using different SDR applications).

I’ve so much to learn about SDR Console, but I can tell I’ll be spending a great deal of time with the application this year, attempting to learn every nuance.

I took Guy Atkins’ suggestion for new users of SDR Console and downloaded Paul Jones’ (NN4F) PDF manual.

I sent a donation to Simon (G4ELI) last night after having only used SDR Console for a few minutes. SDR Console is totally free, but I’m a firm believer in supporting creators who are doing amazing things! If you use SDR Console, consider sending Simon a donation as well.

I’ve a little free time this morning and plan to set up SDR Console to run my Elad FDM-S2, RTL-SDR dongle, SDR Play RSP1A and RSP2. It’ll be a bit revolutionary to have one SDR application to unite them all!

Post readers: Any other SDR Console fans out there? What are your favorite features?

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Popular SDR-Console V3 Software Moves from Preview to Beta

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Simon Brown, G4ELI’s widely used, free SDR-Console V3 was upgraded from “Preview” to “Beta 1” level today. Many SDR enthusiasts have waited for this next step; even in Preview form, Version 3 has performed nearly as well as a production release in many ways.

I have briefly used SDR-Console (V2 and V3) off and on for a few years, but it wasn’t until acquiring AirSpy HF+ receivers that I took a serious plunge into V3. Now that I’ve gone through its modest learning curve, I like this SDR software quite a bit!

There are many things I enjoy about SDR-Console, not the least is the power and ease of use of the Recording Scheduler, a feature that’s important to medium wave DXers. I’m sure others who like to set up unattended WAV I/Q recordings for later review benefit from this also.

I’ve not found a list of improvements between Preview and Beta 1, but I suspect Simon has made the upgrade because the Preview has shown itself to be quite stable already. He did publish a list of a few known bugs:

External Radio using IF output does not work.
Remote Server using the SDR-IQ has stutter.
Kits are not signed – a code signing certificate has been purchased from Comodo but is not yet available.

Simon indicates that these bugs will be worked on in the next few weeks.

If you use and benefit from SDR-Console software, please considering support the development efforts through a PayPal donation. Links to download the newest Beta 1 version, and/or to donate, can be found here: http://www.sdr-radio.com/Downloads

Here are a couple YouTube videos which show SDR-Console V3 (Preview build) in action: